Just why do seahorses look like horses? Helen Scales explains why their equine-looking head makes them stealthy ambush predators <\/p>
Resembling miniature gee-gees makes perfect sense. Seahorses hide among blades of seagrass<\/a>, or camouflage<\/a> themselves on a coral <\/a>colony, then wait for their prey \u2013 often minute crustaceans called copepods.<\/p> It turns out that having a narrow, elongated snout and big cheeks is the ideal combination The shape of the head is hydrodynamic, so it slips through the water, producing almost no ripples that would alert a copepod to the danger it\u2019s in. <\/p> Once within striking range, a seahorse flicks its snout upwards, releasing elastic energy stored at Employing this technique, known as pivot feeding, seahorses are tremendously successful hunters, with a 90% hit rate. <\/p> Just why do seahorses look like horses? Helen Scales explains why their equine-looking head makes them stealthy ambush predators <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":33768,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"< 1"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/11\/why-do-seahorses-look-like-horses.jpg",2121,1414,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/11\/why-do-seahorses-look-like-horses-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/11\/why-do-seahorses-look-like-horses-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/11\/why-do-seahorses-look-like-horses-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/11\/why-do-seahorses-look-like-horses-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/11\/why-do-seahorses-look-like-horses-1536x1024.jpg",1536,1024,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2023\/11\/why-do-seahorses-look-like-horses-2048x1365.jpg",2048,1365,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Just why do seahorses look like horses? Helen Scales explains why their equine-looking head makes them stealthy ambush predators","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/33767"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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